Practitioners

IMI Certification in a Nutshell

To gain the approval of the ISC to a QAP, an educational, training, service provider or professional institution needs to prepare a program meeting certain Criteria set by the ISC. The number of QAPs is increasing all the time and a good number are in the pipeline for review by the ISC.

In order to be IMI Certified, a mediator must, in addition to being qualified via a QAP, put together an online Profile that has a number of obligatory and optional parts. These are explained in a Wizard that helps mediators put their Profile together.

An obligatory part of the Profile is the Feedback Digest, an independently-prepared summary of user feedback collected by the Mediator or Reviewer. The feedback is collected using either the IMI Feedback Request Form or a similar form, and once completed by users this feedback is anonymized and turned into a summary by an independent Reviewer selected by the mediator.

The Reviewer follows Guidelines set by IMI and uploads the Feedback Digest onto the mediator's Profile, which is then included on the IMI Search Engine. The credibility of the Feedback Digest has much to do with that of the Reviewer, and Reviewers' identities are revealed on the Feedback Digest section of the Profile.

Another obligatory part of the Profile is a declaration by the mediator of which Code of Conduct she or he ascribes to, and the complaint mechanism that would apply. Many IMI Certified Mediators have chosen the IMI Code of Professional Conduct and the IMI Professional Conduct Assessment Process (which can result in loss of IMI Certification and other sanctions and is administered by the ISC).